Sepultura - Roorback

Ahhh, Sepultura. I still remember being a teenager and listening to the radio at home in Iceland, Channel 2 it was which is sort of like BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 6 combined, and my favourite radio show came on with album of the week. That album was the might Roots by Sepultura. My musical life safe to say changed quite a bit. Never had I heard anything as brutal up to that point. Those simple riffs, those songs Max's growls/singing, Igor's heavy handed rhythmic playing, Andreas solo's, the Tribal elements, the groove, the swings, all masterfully done. I still hold this album in high regard and still listen to this album whenever I can.

It is on the same listening podium as Iron Maiden - 7th son of the 7th son, Bruce Dickinson - Chemical Wedding and Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Blaze Bayley - Silicon Messiah.

Of course I like so many other people had now idea what was to happen.

Max left. And the rest hired a new singer, Derrick Green. Boy did he have big shoes to fill, though I think Derrick has bigger feet. But I still couldn't wait to listen to their next album which was the ever disappointing Against. It just did not satisfy, by a long shot. And neither did the one after that Nation. It wasn't that Derrick is a bad singer, not by a long shot, it was more due to the fact that the songs themselves were, to put it bluntly, shit. There were some nifty song writing, but no cohesive strong, good songs. 'Kaimatachi' was good and so was 'Sepulnation'. But at albums, as a collection of songs neither satisfied. So Sepultura more or less dropped of my musical radar. Soulfly, which Max founded, on the other hand put out the album that was a worthy successor of Roots. But it was way to populated with guest singers. And then he put out two albums of the same quality as Nation and Against, namely Primitive and III and again there good songs like 'Back to the Primitive', 'Tree of Pain' and 'Son's Song'(Which does have a great guest performance in the guise of Sean Lennon).

Sorry I digress, this note should be about Sepultura and it is for the most part. After a few years they published an album called Kairos, which a gentleman/musician/producer Jóhann Sigurðsson brought to people's attention on Facebook and to my surprise I liked it. I liked it a lot, it was a bit more thrashy slightly closer to Chaos AD then Roots. Then of course I had also heard Sepultura's brilliant cover of U2's 'Bullet the Blue Sky'. Derrick Green had obviously come to more in terms with his own vocal abilities, the man can sing/growl/scream/whisper with the best of them.

So I decided to look at their post-Max career in a bit more detail. It seemed pretty obvious to me that they decided to go a bit more hardcore direction, a genre that I don't really like that much. Definitely in Dante XXI and A-Lex. But my current obsession with Sepultura is their album Roorback. Which is just brilliant. In my opinion(yes opinion which everyone has the same as ass-holes) the best post-Max album. 'Come Back Alive', 'As it is', 'Corrupted' and 'Bottomed out' are all songs I would love to hear live. Andreas Kissers song-writing quite possibly peaked at this album. But I can't really talk about Roorback without mentioning the EP Revolusongs. Where they cover Hellhammer, Massive Attack, Jane's Addiction and Public Enemy. The thing is though they don't feel like covers, Sepultura make those songs their own. If I hadn't looked at who wrote those songs then I would never have guessed, oh and U2 of course.

Bullet the Blue Sky is a piece of cover-genius.

With Roorback it was pretty evident that those guys didn't miss Max all that much. Having said that the following year Soulfly published Prophecy, which sounded like Max didn't them either.

Go on, go to youtube and look for Sepultura's version of Bullet the Blue Sky and while you at it listen to Angel. When your done with that go onto Spotify and listen to the whole of Roorback.

It is a treat.